STICK THIS IN YOUR MOUTH

When I cruised into the internet today, my attention was caught by an article about the worst drive-thru junkfood in America.
Imagine my disappointment upon discovering that no recipes were provided, just loving descriptions.


That's like getting a text-only version of Hungry Beaver-Scratch magazine, without any pictures.
And no full colour fold-outs at all.
Now you'll never know how they build those dikes.
No pictures of beaver mounds glistening in the rain, no illustrations of their big big logs being flopped in the mud. No naughty splashing around or drowsy beaver sleep-scenes.
So very disappointing.


I was really hoping that there would be recipes. A description of artery-clogging goodness just isn't complete without instructions. What if you wanted to duplicate the experience? Some of these disastrous comestibles are strictly regional.

Like Cheese-Steaks, for instance. Sure, you can now eat them at that place in the Mission District that flies in the rolls from Philladelphia every day, but it isn't the same! They probably aim for a higher-quality clientele than the average neighborhood grease joint in the city of brotherly love. There will be no barely better than petfood meat strips, no frying in recycled brown lard on a soot-blackened sheet of boiler metal. No dense blue smoke wafting off the deep fat.
No drunken brawls by pimpled thugs with mullets waiting for their orders.
All of this will have to be lovingly re-created in your own home.

You DO want authentic, don't you?

[One of the most lovely food-porn pictures I have ever seen is the Donut Bacon Cheeseburger Eggwich. The photo elliminates any need for a recipe or assembly instructions. I think I want mine with guacamole. ]


SUGAR!

When it comes to food, there is nothing that speaks to us as potently as the sugar-bombs and clustermuck we ate as children. Junkfood is a powerful component of memory, and it is with great fondness that I recall frikadel, kroket, and friet met mayonaise (mystery meat fried sausagy thing, croquette with no nutritional value whatsoever, and French fries with a dollop of mayonaise).
Please do not scoff - you probably relive your youth with something equally disgusting.


At times Savage Kitten yearns for Hostess Snoballs. The Snoball is a marshmallow chocolate poof, filled with sweetened cream, rolled in electric pink coconut shreds. Nothing else tastes so like childhood. Nothing else is quite so sugary either.

I would sneer, except that I remember scarfing down Tastykakes at the Cheesesteak joint in North Beach twenty years ago (several packs at a time) and thus should not even dare to be such a pastry snob.
Instead, last night I desperately tried to find her favourite confection in our neighborhood. They are nowhere to be found, alas. We are way too high-fallutin', even the poor here have refined tastes.
She had to make do with Ding Dongs instead.